This world you must've crossed
by easytodancewith
Summary: Brooke/Audrey. A story of healing, of new beginnings, and of finding home.


_I think I'll go to Boston_  
 _I think I'll start a new life_  
 _I think I'll start it over_  
 _Where no one knows my name._

When Audrey graduates from George Washington High School, there are chairs left strategically empty in the audience, right at the front. Each is marked with a placard bearing the name of a classmate who won't be in attendance, and at the end of the row is a basket into which every student places a rose.

 _Will Belmont_  
 _Jake Fitzgerald_  
 _Eli Hudson_  
 _Riley Marra_  
 _Haley Meyers_  
 _Tyler O'Neill_  
 _Nina Patterson_  
 _Grayson Pfeiffer_  
 _Zoe Vaughn_

 **xXx**

Noah applies to MIT and Stanford, and gets into both. He procrastinates right up until the acceptance deadline, then chooses MIT because of plans he made with Zoe on the day she died - or, as far as Audrey understands it, plans he _thinks_ they made, although what was real and what was a hallucination will never be totally clear. Oxygen deprivation is a bitch that way. So is being buried alive.

"Noah..." Audrey says carefully when he tells her he picked MIT. She doesn't want to have to ask, but they both recognize the need to check themselves and each other every once in awhile, to make sure they're moving forward without diverging from reality. "You know Zoe won't be there, right?"

"She will be if I am," Noah replies quietly. "I'll take her with me. In my heart."

 **xXx**

When Audrey applied to the media arts program at Emerson College in Boston, she hadn't picked up her camera for months. Her would-be documentary had caused the most deaths in Lakewood since Brandon James, so she hadn't exactly been eager to get back into filmmaking. The only problem was that whenever she tried to picture her professional life, it was hard to imagine doing anything else.

She'd toyed with the idea of focusing her admissions essay on her mom's illness or the first time she fell off a horse, but the longer the topic sentence stared her down from atop a blank page, the more obvious it became that she had to base it on bringing Piper to Lakewood:

 _Write about the greatest adversity you've ever faced._

 **xXx**

Audrey gets into Emerson.

She and Noah road-trip to Boston with as many of their worldly belongings as his car can hold.

 **xXx**

Technically, MIT is in Cambridge, a city otherwise known as being _across the rivah_ from Boston itself. Noah quickly learns the difference and develops a superiority complex that provokes a lot of eye-rolling from Audrey, but she doesn't mind much because Cambridge is actually pretty cool. Nestled between the gleaming silver of MIT's Stata Center and the quiet prestige of Harvard's red-brick buildings are thrift shops, record stores, independently owned coffee houses, hole-in-the-wall concert venues, and a tattoo parlor named Chameleon where Audrey gets her lip pierced.

Boston is cool as well, although when you're comparing everything to Lakewood, it's hard to be disappointed. She doesn't really connect with her roommate, but what their dorm room in Emerson's Little Building lacks in sparkling conversation, it makes up for with a sweeping view of Boston Common.

Emerson has this group called EAGLE, too - Emerson's Alliance for Gays, Lesbians, and Everyone - and Audrey really likes the "everyone" part, how it's not an alphabet soup that tries to be as inclusive as possible while simultaneously shoving people into neatly labeled boxes. She goes to a couple of meetings and makes the kind of acquaintances she can say hey to in passing, but during the fall semester, she keeps mainly to herself with the exception of Noah, and she figures that's probably for the best. Since Piper, she doesn't trust herself.

 **xXx**

Audrey has no doubt that she's been immensely fucked up by Piper and Kieran's reign of terror. The victims' blood seeps all the way into the deepest cracks of her soul, staining her insides a garish red she's pretty sure can never be wiped clean. There's one thing she _can_ say, though - she's never had hallucinations like Emma used to. She's never seen things that weren't there, except for Rachel that one time at that party. So when she notices a slim, feminine figure shrouded in a black hoodie, tendrils of blonde hair falling to her midriff as she leans against the external granite wall of the Little Building, Audrey's startled for a second.

It looks like -

She takes a breath, then silently repeats the simple mantra of _It can't be, it can't be, it can't be_. Besides, the girl has a cigarette artfully balanced between her slender fingers, and Brooke doesn't smoke. Never has, as far as Audrey knows, not even in middle school when it was a big thing to hunker behind the gymnasium and pass around one of someone's parents' Newports like a spliff.

So it can't be a hallucination, but it also can't be Brooke. By process of elimination, it must be some girl who lives on another floor of the Little Building, maybe down the street at Piano Row or across the way at the Paramount. Some girl with a different major to Audrey's, who takes classes in different buildings, because Audrey's definitely never seen her before. She'd remember seeing someone like that.

 **xXx**

Audrey catches sight of the girl again a few days later, when she's running late for her shift at Emerson's Cutler Majestic Theatre. It's cold - January-in-Boston cold, like nothing she'll ever get used to - but there's a suffocating polyblend usher's jacket waiting for her, so she shivers in a black T-shirt as she hurries down the street.

The girl's wrapped up warmly, sporting a thick winter coat with an enormous fur hood that Audrey hopes is fake, and even though Audrey only sees her from the back this time, the sway of her hips seems familiar. There's something about the way she carries herself - her back ramrod-straight, her movements languid. She has the poise of a politician's daughter.

Audrey wants to run after her, tap her on the shoulder just to make sure, just to check. But she's so damn late.

 **xXx**

Audrey finds out Brooke's in Boston from Facebook. Hell, she finds out Brooke goes to her _school_ from Facebook. She mentally chastises herself for not checking it earlier, but she's mostly avoided social media since Piper and Kieran hijacked basically all of her electronic devices.

Her fingers stumble over the keys, the X punctuating Brooke's surname like a kiss, and suddenly the answers she's looking for are illuminated on the screen:

 _Brooke Elizabeth Maddox_  
 _Studies Performing Arts at Emerson College_  
 _Lives in Boston, Massachusetts_  
 _From Queensville, Louisiana_

Audrey raises an eyebrow. Queensville, a few towns over from where Brooke _actually_ spent her first eighteen years, is in a crappier school district but has a way lower homicide rate. Audrey figures that's a decent trade-off.

 **xXx**

Brooke has her own apartment in Boston's expensive Beacon Hill neighborhood. In fact, she lives two doors down from a congressman. Audrey finds this out on account of MIT _notably_ boosting Noah's hacking skills, which she's not so sure is a good thing.

"I can't believe she never told us!" Noah exclaims, staring at his computer as if he doesn't entirely trust what he's seeing. "She's right here, and she never told us!"

Audrey believes it. Although she and Emma stayed close after Kieran, Brooke kind of fell off the map. Her mom was gone all the time, so after her dad died, she just kind of waited out the school year, spending all her time at GWHS or at home as far as anyone could tell. There was a rumor that Stavo's dad became her legal guardian, but nobody seemed to know where it originated and Stavo would neither confirm nor deny when asked.

Emma would talk to Audrey about the situation sometimes, paraphrasing something her therapist said about how people cope with trauma. Some dive into life, Emma explained, while others retreat to the sidelines. Audrey just never thought of Brooke as a sideline girl.

But now she's here. In Boston. Attending Emerson. With Audrey.

 **xXx**

Audrey knows they're bound to run into each other eventually, but that doesn't mean she's prepared for it. When it happens, it's almost anticlimactic in its ordinariness: Audrey's about to join the end of the line at the dining hall when Brooke almost ploughs into her with a tray.

They stare at each other for a few seconds, Brooke's doe eyes wide and surprised. Audrey concentrates on making her own expression as neutral as possible.

"Hi."

Brooke's voice is the same strange mix of husky and girlish, but her face looks older somehow, almost weathered. She's been through some shit, Audrey reminds herself. They all have.

"Hey," Audrey responds, trying to keep her tone flat and even. "So you go to Emerson now."

"I guess so."

Audrey's not sure what to say to that. She just - she needs a second here.

"I didn't know you did too," Brooke continues, eyeing Audrey carefully. She seems to be weirded out by the situation as well, which makes Audrey feel a little better. "I thought you'd decided not to go to college."

And, yeah, OK, maybe Emerson was the only college Audrey applied to, and maybe she didn't tell anybody about it - even Noah, for fear of getting his hopes up - and maybe she got wait-listed and it was kind of embarrassing because she'd always been a decent student. But then Piper happened and Kieran happened and her grades, well, _didn't_ happen, so she figured she'd never hear back from Emerson. Until she did.

"I was, uh. On the wait-list. I didn't know I was coming here until after graduation." _Not that you were speaking to me then anyway_ , she adds silently, and Brooke twists a curl of long hair around her finger.

"Me too."

"You were wait-listed for Emerson?"

"For a couple places. Emerson contacted me and said I could start in January, so here I am."

That explains a lot, Audrey thinks. Like why she'd never seen Brooke on campus last semester, to start with.

"You smoke now?" she blurts out, and Brooke frowns at her in confusion. Audrey feels her face heat up. "I saw you outside the Little Building, or... I don't know, I thought I did. I actually thought I was hallucinating."

"Oh," Brooke says softly. "Yeah, you know, if I'm stressed out or whatever."

"Those things'll kill ya," Audrey quips, offering Brooke a small smile, and Brooke locks eyes with her like she's searching for something.

"So will being stabbed," she counters, and, OK, apparently they're talking about this.

Audrey gestures to their surroundings, the bustle of Emersonians swiping their student IDs at the door, intent on snagging a slice of mediocre pizza before it gets too soggy from the heat lamps, chattering loudly all the while.

"You wanna go sit somewhere?"

 **xXx**

They find a space at the back of the dining hall - a tall, circular table with two stools. Audrey balances awkwardly on one while Brooke glides gracefully onto the other.

Brooke's comment made Audrey recall the last conversation she'd had with the other girl: Brooke was out of it from the pain meds, almost translucently pale beneath the unrelenting lights of Lakewood General as she rambled on about devils with pretty faces. They'd agreed to talk later. They never did.

"You know, you called it before any of us," Brooke tells her obliquely. There's a salad on her tray, and she spears a leaf of lettuce with a fork. "Remember? You told me at my Halloween party that you suspected Kieran."

Audrey recalls every detail of that night, from the school dance to Brooke's backyard to Wren Lake. She wants to forget all of it, except the way Brooke smiled when she asked if Audrey was flirting with her and Audrey said "You wish."

"Um, yeah, I remember." Audrey twists the ring on her index finger. "But then everything happened with Piper, and I figured I was just being paranoid about Kieran because I was jealous."

"Of his relationship with Emma," Brooke clarifies. It's more of a statement than a question.

Audrey wonders if Emma ever told her about the conversation the two of them had at the stables, right before they'd found Brooke's dad. The "You broke my heart" conversation. The cliche _I-fell-for-my-straight-best-friend_ conversation that made Audrey feel like a character in one of the YA books she used to hide under her bed when she was 13 and looking for answers. (She's not 13 anymore, but she's still looking for answers.)

"Of the time he was spending with her," Audrey answers vaguely.

Brooke manages a tight smile. "At least you ended up getting her back."

Audrey wonders if she's thinking about Jake.

"Yeah, for a little while. But she's in Georgia now, you know? And she studies, like, 20 hours a day."

"Emory," Brooke says, exhaling the name like a sigh, and Audrey's a little annoyed that Brooke knows _that_ but had no idea about Audrey going to Emerson.

"Emory," Audrey echoes. She touches her fingertip to her phone, then tilts the screen in Brooke's direction. Emma's saved in her contacts as _Emmary_ , next to an emoji of a syringe.

Brooke laughs, and Audrey's startled by the familiar sound, by the realization of how long she went without hearing it.

"I have her under _Dr. Duval_ ," Brooke admits, and it's Audrey's turn to chuckle.

"God, she's gonna be in school forever."

"Rather her than me." Brooke wrinkles her nose. "I've seen enough blood. Are you dating anyone?"

The sudden change of subject feels jolting, like when the record player in Noah's dorm room skips. Audrey wonders why Brooke cares.

"Uh, no," she says slowly.

She's still holding her phone, and she runs her fingertips over the well-worn letters on the case, stark white against a black background. _DO NOT TOUCH MY PHONE_ , they warn in all caps, but what they really mean is _Do not touch my heart. Do not touch my soul. Radioactive material - please stand back._

"Still bi-curious?"

Brooke's eyes are carefully blank, like she's trying to get as much out of Audrey as she can while showing as little as possible of herself.

It's been a long time since Audrey talked about this. Even when she'd introduced herself at EAGLE, she just told everyone her pronouns, said "Questioning, I guess," and left it at that. It feels weird having Brooke here, like she's talking to a relic from another time, someone who knows things about her that nobody at Emerson does - things she'd rather leave in Lakewood.

"No," she says finally, and then, more honestly, "I don't know. Not really. I'm not anything-curious." She shifts in her seat. "I don't like to get close to people. I have blood on my hands."

"Audrey..." Brooke says her name like she'd said Emory's, as more of a sigh than a word. "There's no blood on your hands."

A shadow crosses her face, and Audrey knows she's thinking of Piper, of the night at Wren Lake.

"Except from when you were defending Emma," Brooke amends, and it's sweet of her, but she should know by now that everything Audrey touches goes to shit. Audrey has the fecal form of the Midas touch.

"And that's why we stayed friends, right?" Audrey asks bitterly. "That's why you came to movie nights with me and Emma, and found me in the parking lot at school like you used to, and kept sitting next to me in English so you could copy from my quizzes? Because I didn't have blood on my hands? Because nothing was my fault?"

Audrey knows she's not being fair - that people deal with trauma the way they deal with trauma, period - but it had _sucked_ when Brooke ghosted on her. And she didn't even disappear because she was _dead_ , a distinction that makes Audrey feel like it's OK to be mad at Brooke in a way she can't be mad at Rachel.

Even _thinking_ that makes Audrey feel so fucked up.

 **xXx**

Brooke's quiet for a solid minute after Audrey's explosion, and Audrey doesn't really blame her. When Brooke stares out the window at the darkening sky, pinpoints of light marking the lamps along the paths of the Common, Audrey feels like there's nothing she can do except sit and stare in solidarity.

"I didn't stop talking to you because I blamed you," Brooke says finally, turning back to Audrey. "I stopped talking to you because I stopped talking to anyone."

Audrey fidgets in her chair, twists her ring around her finger. "You talked to Stavo."

Brooke shrugs with one shoulder. "He mostly drew stuff. I mostly watched."

"I thought you guys were like, together."

"We hung out. He's at art school now."

Brooke's non-answer is as smooth as if she's responding to a difficult question at a press conference. She's her father's daughter, Audrey thinks, and as if Brooke can hear her, she ducks her head and stares intently at a cherry tomato.

"The people close to me die," she murmurs as much to herself as to Audrey, and Audrey wonders if that's the reason Brooke walled herself off from everybody in Lakewood.

She feels a heaviness in her chest, the perma-weight of her blood-sodden soul. She knows exactly how Brooke feels.

"Me too," she says quietly, and Brooke looks up at her with the smallest, saddest smile.

 **xXx**

It turns out Audrey's History of Media Arts class gets out at the same time as Brooke's Languages of the Stage, which happens to be around lunch. They never verbalize the arrangement, but they begin meeting at the dining hall, always snagging a table at the back. It's there and only there that they talk about Piper and Kieran, Jake and Rachel, and then they traipse outside so Brooke can take a cigarette break, the smoke commingling with the mist of her breath in the cold air.

Audrey doesn't tell Noah about any of this. She likes having a _good_ secret, for once.

 **xXx**

Brooke's stressed about midterms, and Audrey thinks it's kind of funny. Noah is, too, but at least Audrey's prepared to deal with _that_ brand of crazy. She only ever knew Brooke as the girl who paid attention in class when she felt like it, phoned in quizzes, had a procession of boys who wrote essays for her in exchange for a little attention. Brooke never really gave a fuck about school, but right now she's trembling from nerves and maybe too much caffeine, shaking so hard her cigarette falls into what's left of the snow on the sidewalk below.

"OK, you've got this," Audrey says soothingly. She gets a weird deja vu feeling of being back in the auditorium at GWHS, calming a blood-spattered Brooke as Emma's mom eased Jake into a body bag. "You love TH150. You're always talking about it, Brooke. History of Fashion and Decor? This class was made for you - you're gonna ace it."

"There are too many numbers," Brooke tells her dully, staring at the downed cigarette. "It goes back to Ancient Greece. There are too many _dates_ , Audrey. I hate this time of year."

Audrey's feeling twitchy, too, thanks to the seemingly never-ending onslaught of death-iversaries, the memories of close escapes, the survivor's guilt, et fucking cetera. She's sick of Facebook's _On This Day_ feature telling her she was at someone's funeral.

She really should figure out how to turn off those notifications.

"I'm not… really sleeping," she admits carefully. They're not in the dining hall - their safe space - so she's unsure if it's OK to talk about it, although Brooke kind of opened the door by saying she hates this time of year. "It's hard to -"

"Be alone," Brooke finishes, her voice so quiet it's almost a whisper.

That's not what Audrey was going to say, but it's no less true. She clears her throat.

"You want me to quiz you on those dates?"

"Yeah." Brooke uses her heel to mash the cigarette into the slush below. "But not here."

 **xXx**

Audrey had never been inside Brooke's Lakewood bedroom ( _Lead us not into temptation_ pops into her head in her father's voice), but she remembers Emma describing it as "frilly."

Brooke's place in Beacon Hill is not frilly. In fact, Audrey would say it's the diametric opposite. There's a lot of black wood and white marble, a gray accent wall, and no photographs.

"Nice place," Audrey says, because she feels like she should.

They'd walked down Tremont Street in a silence punctuated only by Brooke's "This way" when they'd neared Beacon Hill, and Audrey wonders whether Brooke regrets inviting her.

"Thanks," Brooke responds unconvincingly - then, as if she can sense Audrey's doubts, she adds, "and thanks for coming."

Audrey asks "No roommate?" even though she already knows the answer, thanks to Noah. It just… it somehow seems easier than saying _You're welcome_. After all the pain her actions caused Brooke back in Lakewood, the _last_ thing she should be saying is _You're welcome_.

"No, just me."

Brooke's aiming for breezy - like, _Hey, just me, I can have all the college parties I want, YOLO_ \- but her tone cracks at the edges, splinters into shards of glass.

"Nice," Audrey says determinedly. She wants Brooke to think she buys the act.

"Let me guess," Brooke continues drily, like she's recomposing herself, cleaning up all the pieces, maybe sweeping them under the intimidatingly white rug in the living room. "You have a roommate and you hate her."

There's a gleam in Brooke's eyes now, a hint of the gossip queen she used to be, the life she used to lead. It makes Audrey's chest hurt.

"No drama, just… mutual disinterest," Audrey says honestly. "And she hates that I sleep with the light on."

Brooke shrugs that one-shouldered shrug of hers, and Audrey figures she doesn't do too well with the dark either. Honestly, who could blame them?

"Do you want to move in with me?" Brooke asks.

Audrey almost falls over.

 **xXx**

She moves in with Brooke. When she tells Noah, _he_ almost falls over.

 **xXx**

So they do pretty well on their midterms after all. Noah gets a B-minus on advanced something-or-other, which he wasn't even supposed to be _taking_ as a freshman, but that blip aside, they're happy with their grades, happy with the projected GPAs that twinkle like welcoming lights at the end of a dark tunnel. All they have to do is keep working hard and avoid catching, like, mono, and the semester should turn out fine, academically speaking.

"You know why they call mononucleosis the kissing disease?" Noah asks during a rare visit to Boston.

(It's just easier for Audrey to hop on the Red Line to Cambridge, to browse the thrift shops and record stores, to watch the queer baristas at Diesel over the lip of her coffee mug and avert her eyes whenever one of them meets her gaze. Brooke came with them one time and ended up buying this glass wind chime to hang in the apartment, the first sign she'd shown of wanting to personalize the space they lived in. Audrey smiles every time she hears it tinkling in the breeze.)

"Why?" Audrey responds, not because she particularly wants to know the answer, but because Noah will tell them regardless.

"It's spread through saliva. But that's not really fair, because you can also get it from sneezing or coughing or drinking from a cup that hasn't been washed properly or -"

They're in the dining hall, and Noah's talking loudly enough that the students around them are staring. Brooke glares at each one in turn and Audrey looks at her gratefully, then offers a hint of a smile. Brooke offers one back.

 **xXx**

There's about a month left of the semester when Audrey figures out that school has been saving them. She, Brooke, and Noah were looking for an escape, a distraction - a ticket out of Lakewood, literally and metaphorically. Juggling a full course load (along with, in Audrey's case, a part-time job) turned out to be exactly what they needed. And now it's a few weeks away from ending.

Audrey thinks about how much she loves her film studies; how animated Noah gets when he talks about whatever the hell his major is; how calm the air feels when Brooke comes home after an acting class, having left it all out there on the stage.

She doesn't want to go back to Lakewood. Not this summer. Maybe not ever.

She opens Facebook. A few clicks later, and she's from Queensville too.

 **xXx**

Finals sneak up like the temperature - slow at first, then very suddenly. Brooke has a shit-ton to study for Languages of the Stage, and Audrey's Foundations in Visual and Media Arts Production load isn't much lighter. They end up on Brooke's pristine white couch together - the one Audrey's always scared to spill something on - with textbooks and papers scattered across the coffee table, reading intently, highlighting things as they go. Brooke has flashcards, which Audrey finds adorable, and she eventually rests her head on Audrey's shoulder, which Audrey finds terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

"We've been studying forever," Brooke whines, her breath too close to Audrey's skin for comfort.

(Every now and then, a piece of the Brooke Audrey knew in Lakewood slips back into place. Audrey never imagined hearing a college student complain like a five-year-old could make her smile.)

"You want some cheese with that whine?" she shoots back because she loves the classics - and she's afraid that if she doesn't say something, Brooke will hear the loud pounding of her heart.

"Original, Jensen," Brooke says witheringly, but she doesn't move her head and Audrey doesn't really want her to.

 **xXx**

When Audrey turns in her last final, she gets the sensation of the floor falling out from under her. Like, she actually has to put her hand on the professor's desk to steady herself, then says "Yeah; tired from studying" when he asks if she's OK. It's so much easier than admitting that her safety net just got taken away, that now there's no excuse to stay away from Lakewood, GWHS, Wren Lake, and all the memories that come with them. From her dad asking if she has a boyfriend yet.

Brooke's waiting for her outside the classroom, and Audrey's so glad to see her. Not only is she on the very short list of Lakewood-related people from whom Audrey doesn't want to run, she's actually someone Audrey wants to run _to_.

 **xXx**

They walk back home through the Common. Now awash with green, its trees were bare the day Audrey first caught sight of Brooke smoking outside the Little Building. This year, Audrey feels like the two of them blossomed along with the spring, the deep-freeze inside them thawing in tandem with the ice.

"You know, my lease isn't up until January," Brooke says coolly, like she's aware Audrey's been freaking out but doesn't want to actually say it.

"OK," Audrey parries, because she's not about to admit to the aforementioned freakout even if they both know it's happening.

Brooke rolls her eyes, and Audrey gets the feeling that the other girl sees right through her. That maybe she always has.

"So, you know, you don't have to go back there with Noah." (They never speak Lakewood's name aloud - it's always "there," like their own personal Voldemort.) "I'm staying for summer classes. I'm a semester behind right now, and I want to graduate with you."

Audrey feels some of the weight begin to lift, rather incredulously, off her chest. She understands the words Brooke's saying, but the overall concept is taking longer to sink in.

"I can stay?" she asks somewhat redundantly.

The light streams through the leaves, spinning Brooke's hair into gold, and her answering smile brings a sunshine all its own.


End file.
